(Pictured above: The Artistic Directorate and CuriousWorks staff at the Leadership Retreat)
The CuriousWorks Emerging Artistic Directorate of 2021 are four artists with varying creative practices, perspectives and issues and values that they hold with a tremendous amount of care and passion. Since their last in-person meeting at the Leadership Retreat, they have been meeting online with Creative Director Andrea Lim. They’ve been developing their practices as individuals and as a collective, and will be sharing their work at the Generate2168 Festival (now moved to April 22, 2022).
We thought it was high time we introduced these four artists to you all. We held a series of individual interviews with each of the artists and asked them:
- What is your creative practice?
- What do you care about?
- How do you embody what you care about in your art?
- What’s a question you wish more people would ask?
We also asked each of them if they had a last word they wanted to share with everyone. It’s been listed under their photos. That being said, after this introduction, after this year, way after they finish their term as the first Artistic Directorate of CuriousWorks – this will not be the last we hear from them.
Saarah Hanif
She/They
“I would like all the young and questioning artists to create as much as you want and share even if you’re scared because the world needs to see more of you and you deserve to be appreciated.”
What is your creative practice?
My current creative practice is photography, particularly fashion and portraits.
What do you care about?
The main reason I delved into photography was because I had a plethora of issues that I care about. I care heavily about uplifting Queer, Black, Indigenous and People of Colour’s voices, animal welfare, Womxn’s voices and places especially within the creative industry. A lot of what I care about stems from the influences I had and have around me.
How do you embody what you care about in your art?
A lot of my art carries aspects of the issues and ideas I care about through visual representation and words. My Faces Of Culture collection holds the faces of Black and Womxn of Colour by using the voices of these individual’s thoughts on their cultures. My art is always a collaboration with the subject I am photographing. They are the front and centre of my work, and I will always create art that leads back to the concept I care about.
Amira Halabi
Pronouns: She/ They
“Being you is important. No matter how long that journey takes, which road you have to go down, how many mistakes you’ve made – it doesn’t make you less of the human. It sounds cliche, but I think that celebrating your own personal journey – finding yourself, loving yourself, valuing yourself – is so important. Just be you, unapologetically.”
Photo by Andres Rodriguez || IG: @andriguez.hotography
What is your creative practice?
My art practice is very multi-dimensional. My main practice is film, but I also love to paint, draw and perform. Performing is something I’ve done since I was a kid. So, mainly performing arts and visual arts is what I do, and I like to incorporate my activism for social justice within those practices.
What do you care about?
I have three main words that I think are my main values in life. The first one is truth. Always being yourself in life, towards others, always having the truth there is really important for me.
The second one is freedom. My Lilith sign is in Aquarius, so for me that’s freedom at all costs, no matter what. I believe freedom is one of the most important things for anyone. It means that I can actually blossom into the person I want to be.
The last one is empathy. Because you can have freedom and truth, but at the end of the day, I think that recognising that other people and animals and the earth are just as equally important as you are really makes a difference.
How do you embody those values in your work?
I start with my values. I never just start a project because ‘oh, this is cool;’ I always have to link it back to: how is this important? What kind of message am I giving out in this? I will never start a project until I’ve got a definitive why and how.
I never really work alone. I work alone, but I always need to discuss with other people with the same mentality, mindset, values and within the same group that I’m trying to address or portray. With whatever I’m doing, I’ll ask: “Am I doing justice to this? Is there anything that needs to be changed? Any input that you’d like to put in?” Because at the end of the day, you can talk about something, but if no one agrees with you: How are you contributing to the greater good?
What’s a question you wish more people would ask?
I think that a lot of meaning is lost because we’re all just forced into something that we don’t want to do. We’re forced into living a life that is seen as “the right life”, but really, it’s not for you, and that’s how so many people end up depressed. A question to ask would be, “Where’s my meaning? “What am I doing this for?” “What do I want to do?” I think if people find out what they really want in life, you can actually create such a good system and a good society; not one that makes us these robots in this giant machine.
Zoe Tomaras
She/They
“Your productivity does not define your worth. You don’t need a ‘calling’ or a life’s purpose. You are allowed to just stumble through life doing a bunch of cool (or not so cool) shit.”
What’s your current creative practice?
This is a difficult one. I am a trained (whatever that means) actor and filmmaker, but most of what I have done since finishing studying has sat outside those more clear-cut practices. I generally identify as an interdisciplinary artist, but with every project I do, I’m leaning more and more into multidisciplinary work. I would still say I primarily make theatre, but the form of that work is always shifting. I have also started writing a lot more, which is making my past 10-year-old self very happy.
What do you care about?
I care too much, about everything, in a world that undervalues sensitivity.
I care about learning, about storytelling, about accessibility, about cherishing queerness, and about listening to young people.
I also care about TV shows, games, and peanut butter cups.
How do you embody what you care about in your art?
I think, in a way, through a sense of playfulness. I can be very loose with my planning (some may argue a little too loose), but this allows for a willingness to lean into changes in direction. I often get a little lost in my dramaturgical mind, and get stuck in trying to answer ‘but what are we trying to SAY?’. But sometimes we’re just… playing. Questioning, dissecting, exploring. And that’s really okay. We don’t need (or always want) all the answers.
I also embody what I care about in my art by trying to actively learn about and advocate for it outside of my art. It then becomes an inherent part of the way I see the world, and therefore the way my work is created. It’s very difficult to separate what we create from the context we create it.
Community arts and facilitation are a large part of my practice, and through this work it is important to maintain an awareness of my own privileges, biases, and the specific lenses I see things through. I still make mistakes, almost every day, but I am trying to listen and learn.
What is one question you wish more people would ask?
I think people ask enough who, what, when, and how.
We need to ask more ‘why?’, and we need to actually listen to and unpack those answers.
Sandra May
They/Them
“Don’t underestimate Western Sydney, especially Western Sydney artists. We have so much more to offer than just ‘being displaced.’ Stop telling us that our stories aren’t going to make you money. Stop telling us that what we’re doing has been ‘seen before.’ Stop telling us that we should be grateful. You start seeing it with young artists shying away from creating something that’s cultural or biographical because they don’t want to be put into this box of “just another person of colour making art that’s angry about white people.” We have the right to be angry and to make what we want. Throwing money doesn’t mean you get to dictate how we feel.”
What is your creative practice?
The way I think about my creative practice is ever-changing in my mind. My medium has always been video, but the process of me making videos has changed. I consider my artistic practice to be the process rather than the outcome. The process takes longer than the actual showing and whatever praise you get from it. That’s the part where I grow as an artist is through the process rather than the outcome.
What do you care about?
What I always have cared about is just justice in all forms. Whether it be social justice, or justice for an individual, or emotional justice. It doesn’t always have to be like this is a legal thing.
Justice for me has never really felt like that. It just feels like being able to allow people to feel like they’re validated. I guess for me, validation is justice because a lot of us, we go through life without feeling validated, and that’s really sad. So something that I care about, especially with making my art, it’s to create that sense of justice for people. Whether it’s seeing themselves being on the screen or hearing their words or their stories being told through other people… Something that makes them feel like ‘I’m heard, I’m seen, and I feel validated.’ That’s my main care.
How do you embody what you care about in your art?
I don’t know if I’m doing it complete justice. I don’t feel like anyone knows if they’re doing what they’re doing to the fullest extent that they want to.
Through listening, through the workshops and facilitating that I do, I try my best to allow agency. In my own practice, I never like putting my own name on a piece unless it 100% came from me. It’s not that I’m not proud of what I do, it just goes back to that sense of justice. My name shouldn’t be first on the bill just because I directed it or held the camera. It’s a shared work! We all have equal stakes, and even if you’re in there for four days, and I’ve been there for 10 days, it’s still your as much as your work is mine.
I hope that in the end, some part of me is shown in the art, in the outcome, but that’s not what I want people to see. If I know that I’ve learned something, if I know that I’ve helped someone throughout the process, helped someone become more confident in telling this story – that’s what I care about.
What’s one question you wish more people would ask?
“What am I doing?” I want people to ask themselves that a lot more. Throughout any process, I always asked myself “What am I doing?” “Will people understand what I’m saying?” “Is it gonna mean anything?”
It’s the first question you ask. I feel like grounding yourself with that is important because it’s like, if you jump straight into, “what does this all mean?” it’s like yeah, but where are you now? What are you to the story? “What are you doing?” is multi-faceted, and it leads to the other questions.